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RISOGRAPH PRINTING

Risograph printer is a digital stencil duplicator, or ‘copier machine’ to some—the printer uses spot colour inks to produce multiple copies of the same image.

Released in Japan in the 1980s, and often used in offices beforehand, they are designed with speed, efficency and eco friendly processes in mind.

Risograph printing is now a popular printing option for illustrators, graphic designers, zine makers, and other creatives due to its unique imperfections, tactile finish and colours, and can be used to create publications, prints, flyers, menus and much more.

The Ink Available Colours File Preparation Image Sizes & Bleed Imperfections

How does Risograph printing work?

A risograph machines works by burning an image onto washi paper, which is called a ‘master’ (similar to stencil in screen printing where ink is forced through), and wrapped around the print drum. As the drum rotates it leaves the printed impression onto the fed sheets of paper.

Risograph printers are able to print one/ two colours per pass at the same time through the machine. Different from inkjet and laserjet printers, the duplicator is designed to print in medium-sized runs, ranging from usually 50-5000 copies. However, since the same masters are used for such amount of copies, meaning cost per each sheet will become lower the larger amount your print run is, similar to offset printing and other printmaking methods.

The ink

Risograph pritning consists of using spot colours, and uses soy and rice-bran oil based ink. When printed, the ink adheres onto the porous surfaces of papers and never dries fully. Therefore, each layer of colour and each print needs a few days of time to proceed to further printing/ finishing. Riso inks are semi-transparent, so ink can be printed on top of each other for a mixed colour effect. They are very good at showing paper texture too.

The ink colours are spot colours unique to Risograph. They are often represented with the nearest Pantone colour or HEX code, but it’s important to note that digital previews often has a slight difference with the actual printed colour, especially fluorescent colours.

Available Colours

We currently have 10 colours available in the studio: please note that the colours shown here are shown as a closest digital representation, prints and colours seen in person will always be slightly different from your screen.

Inks with * are custom colours mixed by Riso.
Metallic Gold is labled as ** as it is a more expensive custom ink, with a unique metallic sheen

File Preparation

The following points must be considered when submitting files for risograph printing:

All files must be GREYSCALE PDFs, and one file for each colour used on that certain page, please name each file the colour you want to print, for example:

ARTWORK_YELLOW.pdf
ARTWORK_GREEN.pdf

*Halftones are not necessary to apply from your end, since the duplicator transforms all artwork/greyscale information into halftones, and there are certain settings in the print driver for it as well.

Light Teal

Red

Sunflower

HD Black

Full Colour

All files must be flattened, meaning no effects or additional layers on top

All files supplied should also be at least 300dpi for resolution, you can go up to 600dpi to try and preserve very fine details, usually used for photographs.

Risograph typically does not like large chunks/areas of pure colour, it is best advised to lower opacities if your artwork has solid areas of colour, as imperfections will occur. Please ensure you set large flat colour areas to 80-85%.

*Please also supply us with a full colour digital mock up image/book PDF if you are printing more than one colour, for us as reference.

Unflattened vs Flattened

Image sizes & Bleed

The following points must be considered when submitting files for risograph printing:

The largest size our risograph can print is 400x277mm, meaning there will be an unprintable border on the sheet, around 1cm.

If you require or plan to trim your artwork after printing, it is advised to add 3mm bleed on all 4 sides of your artwork for more accurate trimming results.

Imperfections

The following points must be considered when submitting files for risograph printing:

Registration

When printing more than two colours, there will be a decent chance that the alignment of colours shifting between each print, and therefore some sort of misregistration/offset might be expected, and this unique nature are more welcomed by people who loves a bit of mess and charm.

Trapping

For images and shapes using outlines, to avoid white gaps forming due to misregistartion, it is advised to add trapping; It can be done by enlarging the shapes bigger slightly larger than it’s meant to fill in the shape itself.

Without Trapping

Trapping

Roller marks

When printing more than one layer or double sided prints, or if the sheets has too much ink coverage on it on previous layers, roller marks may appear especially on the top edge of your sheets. They can potentially be ‘removed’ with an eraser if they are in a white area.

Uneven Ink Distribution

Riso inks’ nature makes it possible to have an uneven, sometimes speckled ink performance, especially when printing large areas of colour blocks and/ or high ink intensity. This is usually more apparent when printing in darker colours.

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